I keep wondering about the safety of mercury in vaccines and dental work...

I would almost bet that some of the final outcome will be that for folks with no methylation issues, that it's small enough doses to be harmless and their methylation abilities allow the body to deal with the little doses with no ill effect. And those with methylation issues and genetic defects... that it's probably a bigger problem. I've heard a TON of incidental notes tying them together, but of course, unlike dental work - you can't remove vaccines to test the absense of them.

What bugs me the most about vaccines is that mercury is used mostly as a preservative. I'm old enough to have worn contacts at a time when the saline solution (storage solution back in the old days) contained mercury as a preservative as well. Since I had a bad reaction to the mercury (doctors called it an allergy, now I'm wondering if it wasn't always a sign of my inability to handle and eliminate toxins). But within about ten years they came out with mercury-free storage solutions (and less than five years later an all-in-one cleanser and storage that was mercury free). If folks had just stopped FIGHTING over whether it was cause or just contributory factors and focused on the fact that mercury in general is not a good idea, they would have probably already been able to find another, safer preservative to use in vaccines. But nope, as far as I know they aren't even looking for an alternative. Far easier, I guess to dismiss possible concerns with lies.

Last week, PhD biochemist Brian Hookercreated a stir when he announced he had obtained sensitive documents from the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests.

According to Hooker, these documents implicated the vaccine preservative Thimerosal (50% mercury by weight) in causing autism and other neurodevelopmental disorders, revealing what he says CDC officials had long known, but never disclosed publicly: a 7.6-fold increase in autism during infancy after exposure.

Emily Willingham, who frequently editorializes in support of the vaccine program, responded in Forbes by criticizing a news story that went viral on the subject of Dr. Hooker's FOIA revelations.

Dr. Hooker methodically itemized "misrepresentations and outright errors" that he says appeared in Forbes.com.

"Willingham either confused two CDC studies or intentionally deceived Forbes' readers," said Hooker.

"There was one concealed study that found a very high association between Thimerosal and autism. That was the study that was kept from the public which I obtained.

And there was a later study by the same researcher – CDC-paid epidemiologist Thomas Verstraeten – who had watered down the results of the earlier study to appear as if there were no association between Thimerosal and autism.

That second study was made public even though it was fraudulent. Willingham pointed to the conclusions of the later study and implied that they came from the earlier study."

I'm old enough to have worn contacts at a time when the saline solution (storage solution back in the old days) contained mercury as a preservative as well. Since I had a bad reaction to the mercury (doctors called it an allergy, now I'm wondering if it wasn't always a sign of my inability to handle and eliminate toxins).

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Oh, yes, I had a horrible reaction to thimerosol in contact lens solution too. Back about 1986. The whites of my eyes turned bright red and I missed three days of school because of extremely painful light sensitivity. Now that I know about my MTHFR issues, I wonder about that too.

Oh, yes, I had a horrible reaction to thimerosol in contact lens solution too. Back about 1986. The whites of my eyes turned bright red and I missed three days of school because of extremely painful light sensitivity. Now that I know about my MTHFR issues, I wonder about that too.

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I didn't know about that, but I had horrible reactions to all the contact lens solutions... Eventually I had too many episodes of inflammation in my eyes and I had to give up wearing contacts... Now I have chronically dry eyes, and was told recently by a vitreo-retinal specialist that my eyes look about 20 years older than I actually am. Coincidence?

Is it the mercury though, or just the vaccination? There was a very large surveillance study in Norway that found no difference in risk between the mercury containing vaccine and the non-mercury containing vaccine. But if the risk was the vaccine itself and not the mercury, well...

Is it the mercury though, or just the vaccination? There was a very large surveillance study in Norway that found no difference in risk between the mercury containing vaccine and the non-mercury containing vaccine. But if the risk was the vaccine itself and not the mercury, well...

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I think that it's the vaccines themselves which are typically only tested in a healthy population, not in those that are immunocompromised.

This is a great article on how all the hysteria over vaccines has often led to us missing the *real* risks of vaccines.

John Salamone is not a vaccine sceptic. He has never been persuaded by spurious claims that vaccines are toxic to children and responsible for autism or a host of other ailments. But tragically, Salamone found out first-hand that vaccines do have real, rare side effects when he saw his infant son, David, become weak and unable to crawl shortly after receiving the oral polio vaccine in 1990. After about two years of physical therapy and doctors' visits, Salamone learned that owing to a weakened immune system, David had contracted polio from the vaccine. "We basically gave him polio that day," says Salamone, who has retired from a position as a non-profit executive, and lives in Mount Holly, Virginia.

That was a known risk of the vaccination, which causes roughly one case of the disease per 2.4 million doses, often in people with an immune deficiency. A safer, inactivated, polio vaccine was available at the time, but the oral vaccine was cheaper, easier to administer and thought to be more effective at controlling outbreaks. But by the 1980s, polio had been all but eliminated in the United States; all cases originating in the country came from the vaccine. Salamone and other parents successfully campaigned for the United States to shift to the safer version in the late 1990s.

Vaccines face a tougher safety standard than most pharmaceutical products because they are given to healthy people, often children. What they stave off is unseen, and many of the diseases are now rare, with their effects forgotten. So only the risks of vaccines, low as they may be, loom in the public imagination. A backlash against vaccination, spurred by the likes of Andrew Wakefield — a UK surgeon who was struck off the medical register after making unfounded claims about the safety of the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine — and a litany of celebrities and activists, has sometimes overshadowed scientific work to uncover real vaccine side effects. Many false links have been dispelled, including theories that the MMR vaccine and the vaccine preservative thimerosal cause autism1. But vaccines do carry risks, ranging from rashes or tenderness at the site of injection to fever-associated seizures called febrile convulsions and dangerous infections in those with compromised immune systems.

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Researchers have long known that some individuals are more susceptible to vaccine risks than others. Immunocompromised individuals have generally been discouraged from receiving live-virus vaccines. But other possible vulnerabilities are less clear.

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I'm also concerned about federal laws that protect vaccine makers from lawsuits. It seems like these are cases our courts should be hearing.

The decision "leaves a regulatory vacuum in which no one - neither the FDA nor any other federal agency, nor state and federal juries - ensures that vaccine manufacturers adequately take account of scientific and technological advancements," Sotomayor wrote.

The decision is a victory for vaccine makers such as Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline. Kathleen Sullivan, who represented Wyeth in the case before the court, told justices that ruling against the company could lead to thousands of lawsuits in which parents claim, for instance, that the mumps, measles and rubella vaccine played a role in their children's autism.

A solution to these vaccine side effects may soon be with us in the form of DNA vaccines, which are a completely different approach to vaccination — an approach which appears to be much safer (lower incidence of adverse effects).

The challenge is to get DNA vaccines to be as effective as conventional vaccines:

"DNA vaccines were safe and well tolerated, but they proved to be poorly immunogenic. The induced antibody titers were very low or nonexistent ..... However, these studies provided proof of concept that DNA vaccines could safely induce immune responses (albeit low-level responses) in humans."

A solution to these vaccine side effects may soon be with us in the form of DNA vaccines, which are a completely different approach to vaccination — an approach which appears to be much safer (lower incidence of adverse effects).

The challenge is to get DNA vaccines to be as effective as conventional vaccines:

the greater good is subjective, for a start. Who's to say they make the right judgement?
And if theg do, should they have the power to decide to save some at the expense of others? no, governments don't own us and we should have the right to decide for ourselves based on the true facts.

The problem is that in most cases, they are unable to take criticism that vaccination programs could be made safer.

Any criticism, however warranted, is immediately seized upon and the person making such criticism is basically bullied as "anti-vaccine" (do we call all claims that a certain medication or class of medication is causing a certain undesirable effect as "anti-medication"?), selfish, and basically anti-good-of-all-humans-everywhere. During this interaction, it will be claimed that vaccines are entirely safe.

When the simple fact is that vaccines do have known side effects, occasionally very severe ones. It is probable that other effects go unreported.

Vaccines should be like any other medication and engaged with on a benefit:risk basis, but taking into consideration that the benefit may extend beyond oneself (so the acceptable risk may be higher than for other things).

But the benefit:risk is different for different vaccines. People should be allowed to pick and choose without automatically being labelled evil. Purtussis vaccines don't even appear to work, yet refusing that is deemed entirely unacceptable. Tetanus vaccines don't help anyone else, as far as I know, yet refusing prophylactic tetanus vaccines is also deemed unacceptable. Using a modified schedule (note, this is using vaccines, or at least many vaccines) gets one an "anti-vaxxer" label the same as if one advocated for not using any vaccines generally.

And it should be ok to say we can make vaccine programs safer and better.

And the response to that should not be: everything is perfectly safe and efficacious and as perfect as can be--get on board or walk the plank, ye scurvy dogs.

They are worried everything will fall apart and no one will use any vaccines at all, particularly in developing countries, if there is any criticism tolerated at all, but I think people are smarter than that. Besides, I think an honest benefit:risk discussion would likely go a lot further than this perception that there are criticisms that the governments supplying the vaccines don't care about. Also people in African nations and similar places are as able as anyone else to find a disconnect between the entirely safe/efficacious propaganda and the reality where the rubber meets the road, which is somewhat different.